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Comment by jv22222 | Hacker News Reader

My main issue with Spotify is there is no zombie apocalypse backup.

What I mean is, if the zombie apocalypse happened, and you were lucky enough to have solar power to keep your devices going, it wouldn't matter because you would loose access to your favorite songs.

There are a lot of folks who's only music source is Spotify.

I just hope for their sake, there is never a zombie apocalypse ;)

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I started to use their free client to sample music after getting totally sick of youtube advertising. If I like something I get an actual copy of the music. It blows my mind that people would just keep music on the cloud.

Apps backed by the cloud still have a local download option (including Spotify) that does the job for the brief moments you don't have internet.

I realized that needing every song I'd ever want to listen to on my local disk was just a form of digital hoarding. I backed up hundreds of gigabytes of my music, deleted it from my computer, and realized I never cared enough to restore it despite years of collecting and organizing it.

That only works as long as the artist keeps their music on Spotify. I've run into situations where an artist has pulled a release from Spotify, and the downloads disappear once I get internet connectivity again and Spotify re-syncs the licensing.

Definitely - there's an option in the settings to show unplayable tracks. There's tens, maybe a hundred songs I used to be able to listen to that I now can't (through Spotify)

Bonus question: what about when this happens to a Spotify-exclusive track?

The download option wouldn’t work in a zombie apocalypse because if you don’t connect to the Internet for a few weeks the song stops working on Spotify. I know this because I’ve tried it.

In other words with no active Spotify service even downloaded songs simply stop working.

I was even thinking of writing an open letter to Spotify to allow the user to choose 10 zombie apocalypse tracks that would Always keep working no matter what.

I'd just like a feature to download a list of my library. Not the audio itself, it's not mine, but the selection I made. Then if Spotify has any problem (loses data, shutdowns suddenly, whatever) I have a backup of my data.

Also I have about 4K songs on Spotify. When I downloaded them, I still had issues listening to all of them on the tube because Spotify seems to check whether you still can listen to them separately for every song.

I know I have some non-mainstream and oddball stuff that isn't on Apple Music so I want to be sure I hold onto that.

But, otherwise, I started to organize/curate my collection which I've largely not done anything to speak of with for literally years. (And which is messed up in various ways.) And I sort of came to the conclusion that it didn't really matter that much at this point.

Same here. Spotify for me is a legal way to sample all the music that's out there. If I'm listening to a song or album repeatedly then I buy the album, and the artist earns more from a digital download than if I only listened on Spotify. (Though I often listen on Spotify out of convenience, so they get the revenue from both.)

I do the same, except I tend to buy vinyl records if they're available rather than downloads.

Same. Spotify or Google Play Music to do discovery, then Bandcamp or direct-from-artist for the artists you like.

My exercise playlist alone would cost around $600 AUD to purchase, and half of that would be lossy formats.

I go far enough back that I've always had enough of a physical music collection (although much of the vinyl that had never been upgraded to CDs was replicated on Napster) that I still feel like I want to own anything I really care about.

That said, I'm honestly not sure I'd take the same path were I starting from zero.

In a zombie apocalypse, I would worry more about physical safety and staying alive.

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